From 1995 to 2015, the percentage of fatally injured drivers who tested positive for prescription drug opioids rose from 1 to 7 percent, according to a new study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
"Prescription opioids as potent pain medications can cause drowsiness and impair cognitive functions," said principal researcher Guohua Li, M.D. "The 700 percent rise in the prevalence of prescription opioids detected in fatally injured drivers is cause for great concern."
The number of annual prescriptions of opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone, quadrupled from 76 million in 1991 to nearly 300 million in 2014. Opioid abuse and overdose has become a national public health crisis.
Li and co-author Stanford Chihuri examined two decades of data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, focusing on drivers who died within one hour of a motor vehicle crash in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. These states routinely conduct toxicological testing on traffic fatalities.
The researchers discovered that the prevalence of prescription opioids increased from 0.9 percent during 1995-1999 to 5.2 percent during 2010-2015 in male drivers, and from 1.4 percent to 7.3 percent in female drivers.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines meant to reduce the use of opioid drugs to fight chronic pain, citing an "epidemic" of opioid overdoses and abuse.
A study released in March from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that physicians are prescribing more opioid painkillers than ever before to patients undergoing common surgeries.
The new study, which included researchers from the University of Toronto, examined records of 155,297 adults undergoing four common outpatient surgeries — carpal tunnel repair, laparoscopic gall bladder removal, some minimally invasive knee surgeries, and hernia repair.
When the researchers analyzed patients who had not been given an opioid prescription in the six months before surgery, they found that four out of five patients filled a prescription for an opioid pain medication within seven days following surgery.
In the years studied — 2004 through 2011 — they found that the percentage of patients prescribed the addicting drugs increased for all four surgical procedures.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that approximately 2.1 million are addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers. About 467,000 Americans are addicted to heroin, and studies have revealed a strong link between heroin use and the use of opioids.
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